An Instagram Influencer Reviews Ingrid Goes West

Ingrid Goes West stars Aubrey Plaza as the title character, a troubled young woman who moves across the country to track down and befriend an Instagram influencer named Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen). Watching the trailer, you might think the movie ends happily, perhaps with the women becoming actual friends and teaching each other a thing or two about self-worth, but in fact — spoiler alert — the story is much darker than that. There's a kidnapping, a scene in which Ingrid pays a guy to punch her, an attempted suicide. If the movie sends a message, it's that social media is a place for superficial phonies like Taylor to push insecure loners like Ingrid over the edge. What did an actual influencer think of the movie? Rosa Crespo, a fashion blogger with 255,000 followers on Instagram (almost as many as Taylor), shares her opinions below.

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Did you like it?

OK, so I didn’t love it, just because I found it a bit sad and it didn’t really inspire me much. But it did help me understand how people who aren’t in this industry can have this idea of the people who are working in it and I think it’s a wrong idea. It was a very pessimistic, negative way to portray [influencers]. The combination of Ingrid, a sick person that needed help, and Taylor, a person without personality, was really dramatic. At the end of the day, I just want to encourage people not to think of bloggers as narcissistic people, but people who are taking a lot of time to create actual, legit content and inspire in a positive way. That’s the best part of my job.

Do you think of yourself an influencer?

Yes. But not just an influencer. I’m a content creator. I’m a producer. I'm a brand.

What makes someone an influencer?

In order to be an influencer, you have to be real. Taylor was not. It was just for show. She’s popular on Instagram by lying. Even the book that she was saying that she was reading, when Ingrid asked her about the book, [Taylor] just completely switched the conversation.

So Taylor’s not good at her job.

Not at all. She was not a businessperson. She was not influential. She was just a popular girl with likes.

Does she represent a certain section of people in the world of Instagram influencers though? Are there people you’ve met who are like her?

Yeah, [but] the movie wanted to portray only that negative section of this industry that can [exist] in any industry — in cinema, in TV. Obviously it also happens in social media. There are people like her, there are people in other industries like her, it’s just easier to see [on social media].

Do you ever plan where you’re going based on what will look good in your feed?

Yes, of course. It’s all about inspiration. This is one of the good parts of being a freelancer — you get to choose the spot you’re going to be working at. But I wouldn’t base everything on my social media or my work. I’m also a person and I have my personal life. So my social media is my work. It’s an important part of my life but it’s not [my] life. People tend to get the wrong idea because they only see the good stuff but it’s just my work. I’m trying to portray only the good stuff and what I think is going to be inspiring. I have a personal Instagram where my friends follow me.

There’s a scene where Taylor makes a man get on the ground to take a picture, to get a good angle. Have you ever done that to someone?

Oh, yes, it happened to me when I went to Mexico. My girlfriend missed her flight. So for three days she was not there and I had to ask people who worked at the hotel to take my pictures because I had been counting on her to take my pictures. So I had to ask the room service people to take my pictures in the bed or here or there. You have to explain to them. Because if you’re in the industry, you know how to shoot people. When you’re not … when I’m with my mother, for example, she’s a doctor, so she doesn’t know how to shoot a picture.

Were there other scenes in the movie that rang true to you?

Not in a psycho way but when Ingrid was keeping notes about Taylor’s favorite spots, [that rang true]. When I travel to a new city, I always do research. I want to know where to go, where not to go. I always try to avoid all the cliché spots. So if [I see] all the bloggers are posting somewhere, I don’t want to post there.

Have you ever had an obsessed follower?

After you have 250,000 people watching your stuff every day, obviously you’re going to have a few people who are going to get a little bit obsessed with your content. But I’ve never experienced it in a negative way. Perhaps that’s because I’m lucky. I guess for some people, they experience it in a negative way and that’s how the movie portrayed it.

One takeaway of the movie is that social media can make people feel really inadequate. What’s your response to that?

To me, it’s a platform not to be used in a negative way. It’s a way to make communication easier. Obviously some people misunderstand it, some people take it personally, and some people are in a constant fight to grow their engagement. They even become obsessed. They feel like they need to be popular on social media. The most important thing [is]: You’ve got to be secure in yourself. In order to have influence on other people, you’ve got to know who you are, first of all. The reason I get happy when I get more engagement is because that means I did something right in terms of my audience enjoying my content. But it’s not going to make me sad if one day I don’t get as many likes as I expected. It’s easy to compare yourself to another blogger but that’s when I tell myself, “I don’t have to compare myself to anyone but me.” Where was I a week ago, a month ago, a year ago?

Was anything particularly unrealistic in the movie?

One thing I noticed was that Taylor had a really big engagement [relative to her following]. That was a little unrealistic. She had 270,000 followers. She has a little more than I have. I think the producers should have had a few influencers behind the scenes because I laughed at some of the things. I was like, "I would never post this." It was kind of lame. "The couple that yogas together stays together." Maybe in 2011. But not in 2017. You could tell they didn’t know the industry well.

Were you into the peace sign pose?

I don’t think anyone does the peace sign anymore. It would have been more realistic if they were like, “We’re gonna do the duck face.”

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